


i'm lost inside this forest

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, I Don't Even Know, Unreliable Narrator, Ward x Simmons Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 23:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6030448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma is in a forest with Grant Ward.</p>
<p>[For the <b>Forest</b> theme at Ward x Simmons Winter.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm lost inside this forest

**Author's Note:**

> I...do not even know, guys. I really, really don't. It is distinctly possible that I'm beginning to crack under the strain of my schoolwork. Sorry?
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

Jemma is in a forest with Grant Ward.

“Well.” Ward sticks his hands in his pockets, looks around at the tall, tall trees, luminescent and somehow frightening. (The trees, that is. Ward is always frightening but rarely luminescent.) “This is different.”

Jemma hugs her knees to her chest. There’s an odd fluttering in her lungs and a scream trapped in her throat, and it has nothing at all to do with him—which is, objectively, terrifying. It’s not often that Ward _isn’t_ the scariest thing in a room (or forest, as the case may be), and, well…

A man in her head says something about scary things getting scared, and she knows it’s from some form of media. A film? A television show? Something. She doesn’t remember its source, or even the full quote.

Actually, there’s quite a bit she doesn’t remember.

“Did you do this?” Ward asks, frowning down at her. (He doesn’t _look_ scared, but he must be. Mustn’t he?)

Jemma shakes her head. She hasn’t done anything.

“You sure?” he asks, and crouches down in front of her. As she’s sitting on a tree stump, this actually leaves her on a somewhat higher level. It’s disorienting. “Because you look awfully guilty for someone that hasn’t done anything.”

She shakes her head again.

“Fine,” he says, and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He swipes his thumb across the screen, unlocking it. “In that case—”

“No!” Jemma hisses, and lashes out. She’s successful in knocking the phone from his hand, but he catches her wrist in an iron grip before she can withdraw her arm. It’s painful, but that’s not what’s important right now, not at all. “You can’t use your phone, you idiot, it will hear you!”

Ward’s eyes narrow. “ _What_ will hear me?”

She falters, because honestly, she doesn’t know. All she knows is that he must _not_ use his phone.

“You can’t let it hear you,” she says weakly.

Just in case, she straightens out of her huddled position, planting her feet flat on the ground so that she might run if he ignores her very important warning.

His eyes narrow further and then drop, unexpectedly, to her wrist. She’s watching his face, attention caught on the sharp line of his cheekbones and the stubble shading his jaw, but when his brow furrows in…some form of emotion, she forces herself to follow his gaze.

He lifts his thumb from her wrist, revealing that underneath it, precisely in the shape of it, her skin has turned purple. Not purple like a bruise, however; no, it’s a bright, shimmery purple, like the butterfly necklace she wore everywhere when she was thirteen, hiding under her jumpers and shirts so none of her much older classmates could see her childish taste in accessories.

“What the fuck?” Ward mutters. His other fingers slip away from her wrist, revealing a veritable rainbow of imprints—red where his index finger lay, blue for the middle, yellow for the ring, and green for the pinkie.

“Oh, dear,” Jemma says, turning her wrist this way and that to watch the handprint shimmer. “That’s not good.”

“Simmons, what the _hell_ is going on?”

He forces her chin up, fingers light on her jaw, and her skin goes tight and heavy under his touch. She doesn’t need the expression he’s wearing to know that her face, too, has turned colors.

“Something very odd,” she says, “is happening in this forest.”

The look Ward gives her is so exasperated that, despite herself, she must smile. She does so love vexing him.

And speaking of vexing…

She reaches out and pokes his cheek experimentally. Nothing happens.

“Hmm,” she says. “Interesting.”

He’s still got a hold of her jaw, and she grasps his wrist to pull his hand away. That, too, remains unchanged.

“I wonder,” she muses, running the fingers of her free hand up and then back down the inside of his forearm. Nothing happens, other than Ward tolerating it with surprising grace. “Do you think it’s that my skin is turning colors upon contact, or that your skin is _inducing_ color change?”

He rolls his eyes.

“God save me from fucking scientists,” he sighs, and pushes to his feet before she can bring up the numerous problems with that sentence. “Do you know anything at all about what’s going on?”

“You mustn’t—”

“Let it hear me, yeah, I got that the first time,” he says. “Besides that?”

She shrugs.

“Awesome.” He paces away from her, and she watches in fascination as her wrist returns, gradually, to its normal color. She wonders if it’s the distance, or—but he paces back, and her wrist remains pale. “Exactly what kind of using my phone will ‘it’ hear? Is it just phone calls? Is texting okay?”

She has to consider for a moment, turns the question over in her mind and waits to see whether the scream still trapped in her throat will rise any higher, but—

“Yes,” she says finally. “Texting is fine.”

She’s oddly certain of it; still, though, anxiety nips at her as he picks his phone up and composes either one very long message or several very short ones.

After a moment, he makes a frustrated sound. “What about Google maps? That gonna be a problem?”

She shakes her head. He taps intently— _insistently_ —at his phone, then swears.

“Fucking useless,” he mutters, returning it to his pocket. “Where the hell are we?”

“A fairy tale,” Jemma hears herself say, and blinks.

Ward’s eyes snap to her.

“Really?” he asks, tone light in distinct contrast to his suspicious, searching gaze. “I must have missed the one about the glowing trees and the color-changing scientist.”

“There isn’t one,” she says, worrying at her lower lip. As soon as she says it, though, uncertainty seizes her. Maybe that’s another thing she’s forgotten. “Is there?”

“No,” he says slowly, and crouches before her again. “Simmons…how long have you been here?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Things are somewhat…hazy.”

“Hazy,” he echoes. “Great.”

That said, he simply _looks_ at her for a long, long minute. She shifts, strangely uncomfortable, and he smiles slowly.

“Well,” he says, “if it’s a fairy tale…”

Without further ado, he sinks a hand into her hair and tugs her into a kiss. Something swoops, low in her chest, and the scream in her throat melts into a sigh. His mouth is warm, warm enough to make her realize that _she_ is terribly chilly.

He’s a fantastic kisser.

He’s also the enemy, but somehow, it just…doesn’t seem important. Not when heat is building under her skin and the pressure of his hand on the back of her neck is causing something to curl so pleasantly in her abdomen.

Far sooner than she’d like, the kiss is over. His hand is gone from her neck and his lips are gone from hers—and he, she sees when she opens her eyes, is just gone.

So is the forest.

She’s seated beside a lake, now. Mountains rise up around her, tall and frightening. There’s no sign of Ward—except one.

When she leans over the edge of the water, her reflection is crystal clear. Her hair is in tangled disarray, her cheeks are stained with dirt and tears, and her lips—her lips are shimmering, multi-colored, as though she’s found the world’s boldest and most beautiful lipstick.

She presses her fingers to them. She’s not wearing any lipstick.

“Oh dear,” she murmurs. She can still taste Ward on her tongue, like mint and despair. “This isn’t good at all.”


End file.
